Marvel has been teasing its next event, Secret Empire, for a bit, with events rolling out of the Cap/Hydra storyline. And now Disney affiliate ABC has all the core-shaking details and the roll out of he cover by Mark Brooks, complete with Spider-Man in his tarditional taint-first pose:

Marvel has been teasing its next event, Secret Empire, for a bit, with events rolling out of the Cap/Hydra storyline. And now Disney affiliate ABC has all the core-shaking details and the roll out of he cover by Mark Brooks, complete with Spider-Man in his tarditional taint-first pose:

Everything changed last May for the formerly squeaky clean icon when it was revealed he was actually a Hydra agent, the nefarious underworld organization he had been fighting against for the last 70 years.With this Earth-shattering news still fresh in the beleaguered minds of die-hard Cap fans, the question is where do they go from here? Enter Marvel’s new series “Secret Empire,” where everything is about to change, not just for Captain America, but for absolutely every hero in the Marvel Universe.

Oh no everything’s going to change! this never happened before. Oh God, so worried.

Marvel’s Senior Vice President Tom Brevoort and Editor-in-Chief Axel Alonso explained more of what this all means:. Explained Brevoort:

“Steve has been kind of lining his dominoes up around the Marvel Universe to be able to make his move and bring about a Hydra revolution, a takeover,” Brevoort said. “At the point of ‘Secret Empire,’ they are ready to go. That’s the moment we hit as we go in.”

Cap will be unmasked as a Hydra agent pretty early on.

“His plans and Hydra’s plans will have begun to unfurl,” Brevoort continued. “We are done with the covert portion, the buildup portion of the program, ‘Secret Empire’ is the pyrotechnics, the big Michael Bay blockbuster, huge colossal struggles and battles across the Marvel Universe, with all of our key characters and players taking on a big role.”

Secret Empire rolls out in April with a #0 issue and will run for nine issues total, with twice monthly shipping. Nick Spencer writes it and the art team consists of Steve McNiven and Andrea Sorrentino with Leinil Yu and Daniel Acuna also contributing – doubtless to avoid the terrible delays and out of continuity shipping that have made the last two big events – Civil War II and Secret Wars III – mainly ineffective.

Secret Empire appears to be part of a planned “reunion” of the Marvel universe, according to Alonso:

Marvel Editor-in-Chief Axel Alonso said “Secret Empire” is designed to unify the Marvel Universe’s heroes, particularly after the divisive “Civil War II” and “Inhumans vs. X-Men.”

“We’ve just come off of ‘Civil War II’ and ‘Inhumans vs. X-Men,’ two big, dark events that had heroes fighting against heroes, over somewhat defensible positions,” said Alonso. “This is very much more an old school story. You will know who the good guys are and who the bad guys are. This is not heroes fighting heroes, this is heroes fighting a bad guy… We saw this moment as our chance to rally the entire Marvel Universe, which has been fragmented of late.”

Heidi MacDonald is the founder and editor in chief of The Beat. In the past, she worked for Disney, DC Comics, Fox and Publishers Weekly. She can be heard regularly on the More To Come Podcast. She likes coffee, cats and noble struggle.

Did anything change from CWII? I think that event was pretty toothless. “Change” also doesn’t mean just an excuse to launch some new #1 issues. That’s the only kind of change that comes from Marvel events.

Civil War II felt really rushed. Made it obvious they were trying to get it out to ride the wave of the Civil War movie. I’m hoping that this event will be better planned out and set-up.

If you imagine events without Civil War II, it feels a whole lot better paced. You have the huge Secret Wars event, then several mini-crossover events with Pleasant Hill, IvX, Dead No More, etc, and now you build up to another huge universe wide event. Sound fine to me.

But you cram Civil War II in there, and it just squeezes everything together. Doesn’t give readers (or creators) time to really enjoy the new status-quo coming out of Secret Wars. Hell, some titles are only just now reaching double digits!

Anyway, I can rant about Civil War II all day long. But I’m optimistic that this Secret Empire event is going to go a lot more smoothly…

“We’ve just come off of ‘Civil War II’ and ‘Inhumans vs. X-Men,’ two big, dark events that had heroes fighting against heroes”

This is incorrect. The latter doesn’t have heroes fighting heroes, it has heroes trying to prevent the genocide of their race, which includes dealing with the people who are perfectly happy to let them die.

Except that the Inhumans are heroes, they are just not being depicted as such here, which is typically what happens in a “heroes vs. heroes” battle – one side is forced by the writers to do something uncharacteristic in order to create the conflict.

Who reads this stuff? I’m not trying to be a jerk. I just really don’t understand it. Super-hero comics used to be read by kids and adults who started as kids and, for various reasons, kept the habit as they got older. But the regular Marvel and DC titles haven’t had a kid audience in darn near 20 years.

That’s the “who” but it poses an even more challenging question. Why? Why would someone in college be drawn to super-hero comics? Especially today’s super-hero comics which bizarrely smush together childish narrative tropes and supposedly mature subject matter and which, let’s be frank, aren’t terribly well written and are fairly thin as reading material goes?

And by “not terribly well written,” I mean compared to other comics out there. Why are they reading super-heroes as opposed to other genres or more literary work?

And by “fairly thin,” I mean paying 4 bucks for an experience that might last five minutes.

You are in college with access to booze, porn, video games, a universe of online entertainment and the work of the greatest writers of both literary and genre work humanity has ever produced…and you’re going to spend your time on Civil War II?

You know that by the time House of M came out, the Scarlet Witch really said “No More Marvel.” -you know that right???
Let
It
Go.
Marvel is no more.

Marvel is like the USA -regardless of ‘republican’ or ‘democrat’ views, it does not exist any more. We do not matter -or do you think having people pay going on $4.+ dollars for their consensus brand idenity driven crap.

Stop sayin’ mistakes !! Captain America is not a bad guy. The unfortunate hero has just unbelievably tricked with fake memories to have been a Hydra agent since his youth and nos he believe je is ready to make evil. I find this concept totally pitiful and catchy dont applaud Nick Spencer for this horrible change. I m sorry to not love it but Secret Empire (if Cap rules a villainous team again) will be horrible and totally unepic like the boring civil War II and Inhumans vs X-Men. I will stop buyin’ Marvel totally until Captain America reforms himself and if he can’t I hope his death easily during the event. Wait a minute why Cap has hidden his villainous secret while he has also continued to save lifes and fightin’ alongside heroes ? Does he has a good side on him again despite his Vader-like actions or just does he pretends to go good to dupe the other heroes ? I hope please the first answer where Cap will be not a villain all along during summer and that Invaders for exemple (i know they’re back and dim surely defeat Bad Rogers to make him good again by destroyin’ Cosmic Cube either punishing this incorrigible Kobik or urging her to reform Steve Rogers like before. Please I also wanna Heroes against villains but i speak of villains like Hydra villains real Secret Empire with Professor Power returning to rule his true radical politics Viper AKA Ophelia Sarkissian (i hope she”ll also kill Elisa Sinclair since i do lot love her and will reclaim madame Hydra again to conquer the World by killing a reformed Captain America so are others heroes such as Iron Man in his original red and yellow armor) and of course the Masters of Evil once again led by baron Helmut Zemo and his father Heinrich if he is ressurected i expect this please. The true villains will be Baron Zemo Sin Crossbones Arnim Zola Kraken AKA Daniel Whitehall (i hope he’s alive he is a great villain) madame Hydra and Viper (Elisa Sinclair and Ophelia Sarkissian respectivement) and of course Red Skull. The other villains would be the Masters of Evil Magneto and unrelated others villains allying with others villains against the heroes. Here are villains but sorry for trumpist fans and glory for Stan Lee’s followers Captain America will never be a villain or a fascist. If you really want him you have to dream it